Bienvenido or welcome to Chile! We meet in the city of Punta Arenas. From this glorious city we take a direct flight to King George Island, where Bellingshausen station and our sailing yacht are waiting for us. The thermometer here rarely shows the temperature below -7 °C.
If we wish we will look into the only Russian Orthodox 15-meter high church in Antarctica, built in 2004. The Bellingshausen Antarctic Station was founded in 1968 by members of the Soviet Antarctic Expedition. The station was erected in just one month. And from February 1968 till today research activities are carried out here throughout the whole year.
Here we will look for sea lions and seals, and on the way we will surely see seals lazily lounging on the shores of the island. For avid birdwatchers, this is certainly a paradise! There are an incredible number of albatrosses and gulls, and in season there are petrels, terns, skuas and cormorants.

We'll spend the night in a flooded caldera of the active volcano at the Deception Island. The island structure resembles a horseshoe and it has the best natural harbor for waiting out any extreme weather. At the beginning of the 20th century it used to be a whaling station here; it’s remains can still be found on the island. The Bailey Head headland is located on the outer side of the island, it is inhabited by the largest colony of the Antarctic penguins. It is an amazingly beautiful place but extremely difficult to disembark at. We will need a total lack of wind and a calm ocean in order to get there.

Here we'll moor for the night to a sunken ship in the place called Enterprise. In the daytime we'll be looking for whales here. If we are lucky, we’ll be able to see one of the most stunning wildlife activities — bubble net feeding, the process when whales blow bubbles from their noses to encircle their food like a net, and then several whales come up to the surface at once and gulp up the krill caught into their bubble trap. That is an unbelievable, breathtaking show!

Lemair Channel separates Booth Island from the Antarctic Peninsula. The most narrow part of the Channel is only 300 meters wide: one can see sheer cliffs up to 400 meters high rising from both sides of the vessel. Sailing through this channel is one of the most memorable moments of the Antarctic cruise. Orcas and humpback whales visit these waters quite often.

Yalour Islands is a group of low rocky islands not far from the Academic Vernadsky station. This is one of a few places on the Antarctic peninsula inhabited by a colony of Adélie penguins. The island itself is surrounded by icebergs and ice floes with seals resting on them.

Our expedition has come to the finale. We return to the Bellingshausen polar station, say goodbye to the crew and the yacht and fly to the continent, to the Chilean city of Punta Arenas! In the pre-Columbian era, the territory of modern Punta Arenas was inhabited by the Tehuelche Indian tribes, who were engaged in hunting, fishing and gathering. The first whites to visit these lands were the Spaniards from Fernan Magellan's circumnavigation expedition in 1520.